The sympathetic judges sealed everything concerned with the case, including the report. Barrett was instructed to remain deathly silent on pain of criminal prosecution. Yet Levin, as ranking Democrat of a Senate oversight committee, eight years ago gained access to the raw data of Barrett's prosecutorial effort after requesting it in a Nov. 20, 1997, letter to the judges.
Barrett's densely packed 120-page report is followed by a 500-page appendix with more than 2,500 footnotes. Grassley thought he had an agreement with Dorgan to amend the Treasury appropriations bill to close down Barrett's office and publicly release "all portions of the final report" except for any "clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy."
But Grassley is not an appropriator, and Democrats in the Senate-House appropriations conference slipped through a critical change. The final language authorized the judges "to protect the rights of any individual named" in the report. With two out of three judges on a three-judge panel inclined to the Democrats, that means hardly any of Barrett's allegations will remain in the report made public. The bill was passed by Congress on Nov. 18 and signed into law Nov. 30.
Republican congressional sources expect Section B of the report, dealing with the allegations of IRS-Justice corruption, to be eliminated in its entirety. The rest of the report will be so heavily redacted to obey the new congressional language that it will be of scant interest to either ordinary citizen or legislator. This long, tendentious battle to keep David Barrett away from opening a probe into what really happened in the Clinton administration then will have appeared to have been concluded with an unconditional victory.
But maybe not. Chuck Grassley is a stubborn Iowa farmer who often drives the White House and Republican leaders to distraction. He has said that if the Barrett report finally emerges as a mutilated remnant in order to protect the IRS, he will press for legislation to change that. It may be the last hope for the truth to emerge.